JOY OF LIVING (1938)

This screwball comedy, with ill-fitting musical elements, is a close relation thematically to HOLIDAY, with overtones of Jean Harlow's BOMBSHELL. Irene Dunne is a Broadway singing star who lives with and supports her crazy family. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is a carefree guy with money (they all were back then!) who has the same philosophy that Cary Grant does in HOLIDAY, to be free of obligations so as to live life to its fullest. He thinks Dunne could benefit from some attention to her "fun" needs, so he spends the whole movie trying to win her over to his way of thinking, which also means getting her away from her leeching family. This isn't as much fun as DOUBLE WEDDING, in which William Powell performs a similar function for Myrna Loy (and nowhere near as fun as HOLIDAY), but the supporting cast includes Eric Blore, Alice Brady, Franklin Pangborn, and Lucille Ball. I especially liked Jean Dixon, who played the maid in MY MAN GODFREY and Edward Everett Horton's wife in HOLIDAY. She plays Dunne's maid, who is the first to realize that Fairbanks, despite getting on Dunne's nerves (actually, today we'd call him a stalker), might be good for Dunne. This one could also stood to have been a bit shorter toward the end, and Dunne's songs are bland, but overall, not bad.